ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

1356 Edward Balliol surrenders his claim to the Scottish throne to Edward III in exchange for an English pension.

1694 The Dageraad, with salvaged treasure from the Gouden Buis, which had run ashore at St Helena Bay, is wrecked on the reefs off Robben Island. Nine of the Dageraad’s 17 salvaged chests of silver coins are recovered.

1697 The notorious pirate Captain William Kidd is reported off Cape Town.

1835 Xhosa warriors overrun the Eastern Cape frontier.

1841 Hong Kong Island is occupied by the British.

1879 British troops under Lord

Chelmsford pitch camp on the slopes of Isandhlawana, where Zulu warriors attack them two days later.

1900 In the Battle of Tabanyama, on the Natal front of the Anglo-boer War, a group of Indian stretcher bearers, among them the young Durban attorney Mohandas Ghandi, becomes intermingled with fighting troops. Six are killed and 12 wounded in the crossfire. The battle continued two more days.

1942 Nazi officials hold notorious Wannsee conference in Berlin to organise the “final solution” - the extermination of Europe’s Jews

1944 The Royal Air Force drops 2 300 ton of bombs on Berlin, capital of Nazi Germany.

1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt is sworn-in for an unprecedented (and never to be repeated) fourth term as US president

1961 John F. Kennedy becomes the 35th President of the US, and the second youngest man to take the office, and also the first Catholic. The youngest was Theodore Roosevelt.

1981 Ronald Reagan is inaugurated the 40th President of the US. Twenty minutes later, Iran releases 52 American hostages.

1989 Ronald Reagan becomes 1st US President elected in a “0” year, since

1840, to leave office alive

2009 Barack Obama becomes the 44th President of the US. He is the first African-american president.

2017 Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th President of the US - the the oldest person to assume the office. |